New car news

16 January 2009 - 09:00

Bentley goes bio

Further proof that no marque is safe from the relentless march of green: Bentley has announced that it will unveil a biofuel-powered concept at the Geneva show in March. 

We don't know what it'll look like yet (that car in the photo is the GTC Speed, which we've shown because, well, we just wanted to) - though we're guessing ‘big’ and ‘fast’ might feature fairly high on the agenda - but the biofuel Bentley will be the first of many. In Detroit, the Crewe-based manufacturer published a report imaginatively titled Bentley and Biofuels (sounds like a 1930s boys’ adventure novel, no?) which outlined plans to move the entire fleet to bioethanol capability by 2012.

No surprise that Bentley has opted for the biofuel solution to the big green problem: it's a cost-efficient way of keeping power levels nice and high while lowering CO2 output. Trying to get Bentley levels of power from, say, a genuine petrol-electric hybrid would have required NASA-grade engineering and a battery pack the size of the Isle of Wight.

As we see it, there's just one problem. Surely Bentley owners won't be happy filling up their car with biofuel harvested from any old scrubby plant life? Top Gear predicts that this could herald the era of designer biofuel: tasty fuel hand-crafted from the finest Honduran mahogany and Japanese iris.

The WAGs will settle for nothing less.